In case you were wondering. This was the first story I saw this morning. Talk about being set up for the day:
The European Union is strongly criticizing a congressional proposal to charge a $10 fee to some visitors to the United States and suggesting it may carry a price for U.S. travelers.
If it passes, the EU says, some U.S. travelers to Europe could face retaliation.
The fee now under consideration in Congress would finance a new U.S. program to promote travel, a burden that the EU believes Americans should bear.
"Only in `Alice in Wonderland' could a penalty be seen as promoting the activity on which it is imposed," the European Commission's Ambassador to Washington, John Bruton, said in a statement Friday.
It gets even more surreal:
Early, this year, however, the United States began requiring people traveling to the United States under the visa waiver program to register online at least 72 hours before travel and renew their registration every two years. If the new proposal is passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, it would require all visitors to pay the fee when they register.
The money would pay for a travel promotion campaign run as a public-private partnership. Among its aims would be educating foreign visitors on U.S. entry procedures, including the online registration for visa free travel.
I'm speechless.
No comments:
Post a Comment